I must have some kind of nostalgia childhood association with watching this film on television on some Friday night when my parents were away from home and I had the television all to myself sometime in the mid-1970's in De Queen Arkansas.
I write about being familiar with this film as I watch for the first time the DVD for the 1971 film "The Andromeda Strain" but I do not consciously recall a lot of scenes that are happening now as I watch it on DVD. At this point at the 01:35 hour point I have paused the DVD as the wreckage of the Phantom is onscreen and all I know that will happen in the rest of the film is that "Odd Man" will try to disable the atomic bomb from blowing up the facility and I can definitely recall that element of the film because I recall he is struggling to make it to a substation that is in operation and he gets hit in the face with some kind of laser beam, as best I recall, as he is trying to get his key to a substation where he will terminate the self-destruction.
But what I think about nowadays is about the reason such a role exists. The role of terminating the self-destruction is not a trivial role. That role is not automatically assumed to be terminated. If the protocol's indicate that the facility has been compromised then that role requires the participant to take no action to prevent the destruction of the facility.
Who would you rather trust with such a role? Some liberal arts graduate who has never even considered the meaning of his life much less your own life or a commissioned officer of the United States Marine Corps.
http://www.cswap.com/1971/The_Andromeda_Strain/cap/en/25fps/a/01_28
The Andromeda Strain
1:28:29
My air hose is coming apart...
1:28:30
like it's dissolving!
1:28:32
Everything made of rubber
is coming apart!
1:28:36
I feel funny.
1:28:41
It's a fluke, a vibration effect maybe.
1:28:45
Let's get up there.
1:28:47
Has Wildfire been informed?
1:28:48
You mean the germ people?
1:28:49
It went out to them on
the scrambler an hour ago.
1:28:52
This they can't ignore.
1:29:16
I. B. Control
to cafeteria level 3.
1:29:21
Number 4 Charlie hatch
shows condition blue.
1:29:23
Alter responsivity characteristics
1:29:25
until you get condition green.
1:29:34
Ready.
1:29:44
Nothing so unusual
1:29:45
about our rock after all.
1:29:47
Hydrogen, carbon, oxygen,
1:29:49
sulfur, silicon, et cetera.
1:29:51
Except the black rock
isn't rock at all.
1:29:54
It's some kind of material
similar to plastic.
1:29:56
How about that?
1:29:57
The green is even simpler.
1:29:59
Hydrogen, carbon,
nitrogen and oxygen.
1:30:02
The four basic elements
of life on Earth, nothing else.
1:30:05
That's a relief.
1:30:07
I'd have been happier
1:30:08
if it'd turned out not to be alive.
1:30:10
Green stuff,
1:30:11
you really had us going for a while.
1:30:14
A. A. Analysis results
are ready, Dr. Dutton.
1:30:20
Something's wrong.
1:30:22
It's not registering.
1:30:23
Yes it is, sir.
1:30:25
It's just registering
double-zero, double-zero.
1:30:28
We'll switch to computerized analysis.
1:30:37
No amino acids!
1:30:39
No proteins, no
enzymes, no nucleic acid.
1:30:42
Impossible! No organism
can maintain life without them!
1:30:45
You mean, no Earth organism.
1:30:48
It must have evolved in
a totally different way.
1:30:50
You got it.
1:30:51
It doesn't come from here.
1:30:54
Without chemical reactions
there can't be life,
1:30:57
yet it grows, reproduces...
1:30:59
Wait!
1:30:59
The infection at Piedmont
1:31:01
has been stopped by the bomb.
1:31:02
We're secure at Wildfire.
1:31:03
We have everything we need
to achieve a breakthrough.
1:31:08
All we have to do is attack this
problem like any other in science.
1:31:11
You could spend years
1:31:12
working on a thing like that
1:31:13
without solving its structure.
1:31:14
But when you do, there'll be
1:31:16
some red faces around.
1:31:17
It could change everything.
1:31:22
Great.
